Scream: Typical slice 'n' dice

Scream (2022) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and some sexual references

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.14.22

Sigh. Everything old is new again.

 

The Halloween series has risen from the grave repeatedly; 1960’s Psycho was re-imagined as the TV series Bates Motel; and Netflix will debut a re-boot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre next month.

 

With varying levels of interest, skepticism and outright disbelief, the possible next victims
of the ongoing murder spree — from left, Wes (Dylan Minnette), Richie (Jack Quaid),
Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Dewey (David Arquette) — listen while the horrific
situation's "rules" are explained.

Ergo, why not similarly revive Scream?

The first film’s 1996 debut quickly spawned a trilogy that “concluded” four years later. 2011’s Scream 4 attempted — and failed — to breathe new life into the murder sprees occurring in small-town Woodsboro; a three-season television series, from 2015-19, had nothing to do with the franchise beyond borrowing its name.

 

Creator Kevin Williamson’s shrewd “gimmick” — he scripted the first, second and fourth films — is that these characters are well versed in horror films, and speak knowledgably about what one should (and shouldn’t) do, when confronted with a masked killer murder spree.

 

But more often than not, they ignore their own well-researched advice. With predictable results.

 

The movie-obsessed killers, as well, are required to act according to certain genre expectations. Finally, there are three well-established rules:

 

1) Never trust the love interest;

 

2) The killer’s motive always is connected to something in the past; and

 

3) The first victim always belongs to a “friend group” that the killer is part of.

 

As the series progressed, it became increasingly self-referential and meta, with each fresh set of characters (victims) debating the merits (or lack thereof) of a film series — Stab, Stab 2, etc. — that exploits these Woodsboro tragedies. This, in turn, spawns fresh killing sprees by new maniacs concealed behind the Ghostface mask, which prompts further Stab entries. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

(Honestly, you’d think Woodsboro would have run out of residents by now.)

 

The question, then, is whether this 2022 entry has anything fresh to say. The answer: Slightly yes, mostly no.

Clouds: A ray of sunshine

Clouds (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for brief profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.20.20

John Kennedy Toole was 25 when he wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. He committed suicide six years later, having long suffered from grief, escalating paranoia and (very likely) despair over having failed to get his book published.

 

Zach (Fin Argus) and Sammy (Sabrina Carpenter) noodle their way through the first
few lines of a song-in-progress, little realizing where this creative burst will
eventually lead.

His mother found a carbon copy of the lengthy novel in his effects; she, too, struck out with several publishers before Louisiana State University Press accepted the manuscript. The book was published in 1980, became a best-seller and — the following year — won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: a level of recognition Toole was long past being able to enjoy.

 

Zach Sobiech, on the other hand, didget to watch one of his songs become a hit.

 

But only briefly.

 

Director Justin Baldoni’s deeply moving Clouds depicts Sobiech’s final tumultuous year — as a high school senior — after having battled osteosarcoma (bone cancer) for several years. Baldoni’s heartwarming film is a dramatized expansion of an episode of the documentary series My Last Days, which he produced in 2013, and which featured Sobiech.

 

This film’s screenplay — by Kara Holden, Casey La Scala and Patrick Kopka — is adapted from the memoir Fly a Little Higher, by Sobiech’s mother Laura. The scripters have taken a few liberties — shortening the key timeline, adding a bit of dramatic tension and a few “movie moments” — but the core story is quite accurate.

 

Accurate enough, in fact, to have earned the approval of Zach’s family and close friends (many of whom pop up in various background shots).

 

Fin Argus, best known for the TV shows The Commute and Total Eclipse, makes a solid feature starring debut as Zach. It’s a challenging role; under Baldoni’s careful direction, Argus deftly navigates the extremes of stubborn determination — without becoming some sort of overly cheerful poster child for cancer sufferers — and, alternatively, bouts of grinding despair.

 

The family dynamic also feels wholly natural, notably the good-natured teasing and jostling that takes place with older siblings Alli (Vivien Endicott Douglas) and Sam (Dylan Everett), and younger sister Grace (Summer H. Howell). The interactions between Argus and Howell are particularly strong, and one of their later scenes is a killer.

 

Skyscraper: Up in smoke

Skyscraper (2018) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence and fleeting strong language
By Derrick Bang

First Pacific Rim: Uprising, and now this colossal dud.

If they represent the future of collaborative Sino-American filmmaking, we’re all in a lot of trouble.

At about this point, Will (Dwayne Johnson) and Sarah (Neve Campbell) must be asking
themselves one question: How the hell can we escape this ridiculously stupid movie?

Skyscraper is an inept, Frankenstein’s monster of a movie, noteworthy mostly for the way writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber shamelessly stole elements from far better sources: a little bit of Die Hard, a lot of Towering Inferno, a soupçon of Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, and a particularly ludicrous lift of the hall of mirrors sequence, from 1947’s Lady from Shanghai.

Frankly, I’m amazed Thurber had the gall to claim scripting credit, since there isn’t a single original note in this cacophonous, failed symphony of an action flick.

This is the apotheosis of lowest-common-denominator junk. Big budgets do not guarantee big pictures.

On top of which, Dwayne Johnson needs to select his starring roles much more carefully. Between this ludicrously silly atrocity and spring’s Rampage, he’s 0 for 2 … and believing yourself bullet-proof is the fastest path to destroying a once-golden career.

A brief prologue introduces Johnson as FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran Will Sawyer, as he heads a mission that goes horribly awry. Flash-forward a decade, and we discover that Will lost a leg but gained a family, thanks to having met Naval surgeon Dr. Sarah Sawyer (Neve Campbell) in the aftermath of said catastrophe.

He now assesses skyscraper security protocols on behalf of insurance companies, having recently been hired to give final clearance to The Pearl, Hong Kong’s fresh bid at erecting the world’s tallest skyscraper. It’s a masterpiece of Jim Bissell’s laughably overstated production design: 3,500 feet and 225 stories tall, towering over the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor, complete with a six-story shopping mall, a 30-story interior park, and more than 100 floors of luxury residential suites.

And a giant golf ball on top.

(Okay, it’s actually — and I’m quoting the press notes here — “an enormous luminous sphere … inspired by the ancient Chinese fable The Dragon Pearl.”)

Still looks like a giant golf ball, resting atop an overstated glass-and-steel tee.